Friday, August 31, 2007

How To Curb 'Binge Drinking'?

Scrap the drinking age. Unfortunately the piece is available for subscribers only, but here are the salient points:

-- Mediterranean societies (Italy, Greece, Turkey) "begin socializing children into drinking at an early age."

-- A World Health Organization study "revealed that these Mediterranean countries and Israel had the lowest binge drinking rates among European adolescents."

-- Here in America, children "whose parents introduced drinking to children at home were one-third as likely to binge."

The author, Stanton Peele -- a psychologist, therapist and attorney -- concludes: "Parents who do not introduce children to alcohol in a home setting might be setting them up to become binge drinkers later on."

Yet in many (if not most) states, this is illegal. Politicians have criminalized parental behavior that has been shown to reduce "binge" drinking. What, have they no concern for The Children?!